


ashes to ashes (we all fall down)

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2018-01-12 18:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1195623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s always the same three people in this dusty old library: a blond, who looks at the pages of his books as though his pain melts away with every turned page; an angry-looking boy who grunts too often as he paces through the aisles, but never picks up any of the books (his eyes just flit across golden lettering); and then her – she’s a thunderstorm, the constant drizzle causes the ink of the pages of her books to smear until the words are illegible. They suppose they are best friends, or as close as best friends as they will ever have--.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ashes to ashes (we all fall down)

**Author's Note:**

> tw for depression  
> this is a study of depression through Mikasa and her hardships of combating it.   
> in this, i should mention that Levi would be around mid-twenties, and Mikasa/Eren/Armin are out of high school.  
> this chapter is one of those chapters wherein you don't know how much to reveal yet.

_MY BONES ARE BRITTLE AND THEY RATTLE WHEN I MOVE. ALL MY WORDS ARE SMOKE AND NO ONE CAN CATCH THEM AS THEY RUSH OUT. THE BREEZE CARRIES THEM AWAY. I HAVE LEAKS THAT NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO FIX AND SOMETIMES I TRY TO HOLD MYSELF TOGETHER WITH DUCT TAPE. MY WRISTS ARE FRACTURED FROM PUNCHING THE WALLS THAT SURROUND ME. I AM TIRED._

— _help_

It is always the same repetitions day in and day out; Mikasa finds that her bones creak when she moves robotically. Nothing is calculated any longer because memory holds the exact way her muscles tense when she pushes open her bedroom room, of how she skips breakfast and her aunt’s brutal stares, and the way she blinks tears out of her eyes hours later when she feels her stomach _roll_ in hunger and nausea. For her, they are a package deal; she doesn’t like skipping meals, but she’s not freely given food these days.

>Complete task  
>Gain reward

In her case food is (sometimes) her reward; other times it is just an escape from harsh words that sting her cheeks. The apathy with which she treats her aunt’s brutality is her way of hanging to the last threads of strength with her fingernails buried deep within: she’s not succumbing completely to her mistreatment.

Her aunt took her in at the age of ten, she believes, but the memories are all covered in a haze; whenever she comes home too late, she’s treated with all the malice that she deserves, and when she performs every trick that is asked of her, she’s simply given _harder_ tasks to complete. That had been her incentive to stop trying to impress her family. Her aunt took to burns from the tips of cigarettes that would sear the delicate skin of her wrists (and the insides of her elbows). _If you weren’t born then my brother wouldn’t be dead_ , her smile says. Loneliness crushes some people differently than it crushes others.

If Mikasa had thought herself at fault for her parents’ deaths, then she would have dutifully exposed of herself in the simplest way possible, but she had been ten and excitable: a glimmer in her eye as she gathered flowers with her friends from school, braiding them into each other’s hair. Now she’s hollowed out pieces of wood that have been nailed together messily; when she looks in the mirror, she sees a person who resembles a coffin.

Recently, she’s taken to spending most of her time in the dust-filled library that is misplaced on the outskirts of town; it takes forty-seven minutes to walk to almost every day. If she forgot to visit, she doesn’t think that anyone would notice anything amiss, but as she walks with her arms wrapped tightly around herself, she dutifully heads along streets with scant amounts of cars until she’s loosening her scarf from around her neck. The door opens easily, welcoming her to the house of the lonely.

There’s always the same three people in this dusty old library: a blond, who looks at the pages of his books as though his pain melts away with every turned page; an angry-looking boy who grunts too often as he paces through the aisles, but never picks up any of the books (his eyes just flit across golden lettering); and then _her_ – she’s a thunderstorm, the constant drizzle causes the ink of the pages of her books to smear until the words are illegible. They suppose they are best friends, or as close as best friends as they will ever have; when the blond laughs (like church _bells_ ), the other two smile in response whether they can help it or not.

Sometimes the angry boy knocks over things like a tornado, and if he’s a tornado, then the blond is some healing force that has power to fix anything broken. _Fix me_ , she bites down on her bottom lip until she tastes blood. It is a deliriously intoxicating poison that she _enjoys_ ; it helps her remember that she’s actually a living entity. “Cigarette.” She says, speaking in broken sentences always works in her favor because they treat her better the less she speaks. Surprisingly, the blond is the one to pull out a pack of the addictive sticks of nicotine; he handles it like dynamite, as though it can destroy him. The thing about cigarettes is that someone has to give them the power to kill.

After she lights it up, the drag she pulls from it makes her eyes water and her throat clench; she wants _water_ , or to go back home and slip into her bed without any looming gazes silently watching her. Even now, she feels the angry boy’s stare on her and adjusts her skirt, while pulling on her top. Exhaling, she sputters ungracefully; everything about her is _ugly_ , she thinks. The librarian scoffs quietly from his desk, and it causes her to raise her eyebrows as she turns to glance at him in rapt curiosity.

“Snotty brats: that’s an ugly habit you have between your fingers.” The librarian’s speech is clipped short, like the wings of a bird that no longer has liberty to fly. In his throat, dust is collected from years of isolation; the smoke clouds her vision, but she thinks he looks _beautiful_.

She opens her mouth to speak, but it is the angry boy who replies: “There isn’t _no smoking_ signs.” While they argue, she breathes in deeply, letting her lungs take in as much of the toxin she can handle before exhaling; the blond flinches as tendrils of smoke play on his cheeks, the smell makes him retract back into his reading.

In her lap, her phone vibrates.

Her attention is brought to urgent messages from her aunt: _you didn’t make your bed_ and _where are you?; come home_. Immediately, she turns her phone off. Her aunt grates on her nerves constantly, and she needs time to herself sometimes. The librarian quiets with a snort; the angry boy looks annoyed, but also quiets. When he lights his own cigarette, his cold, green eyes never leave the librarian’s bored ones.

They’ve known each other for eight years now, but she’s never caught a syllable of their names; playing with her lighter, she introduces herself: “I’m Mikasa Ackerman,” her voice sounds unsure and quiet to her ears.

“Mikasa, if you catch this building on fire, I will promptly deal with you myself,” the librarian pipes up from behind his desk. Instantly, she closes the lighter and throws it atop the table stubbornly.

The blond lifts his eyes from his book and smiles warmly at Mikasa; every time he looks at her, she feels enthralled by him: one of his eyes is a startling sky blue, while the other is a dark hazel color. At first, she had been uncomfortable underneath his uneven stare, but now it enraptures her. Aesthetically, he’s the most interesting of the three with large doe eyes that look at everything with the utmost interest; everything is important to him and is treated as it should be. “Armin Arlert,” his voice is soft when he speaks, but it quickly fades away as they turn to the angry boy.

“Eren Jaeger,” he supplies simply before replacing the cigarette between his lips. Armin’s eyes stray to the cigarette before he shakes his head; he’s having an internal battle that only Mikasa is aware of because they are familiar to her. “Do you want to try?” Eren notices the war that wages just beneath Armin’s surface too, apparently.

Maybe they aren’t so different.

Unperceptively, Armin nods; somehow, Eren notices and pulls in a deep drag from the cigarette before stamping it out on the table. The librarian huffs, standing from his desk. Mikasa’s attention is pulled in two directions as she desires to watch Armin experience cigarettes for the first time, but the librarian constantly pulls her attention away. Currently, he’s only shelving books, so she turns back to the boys.

Eren cups his hands around Armin’s mouth and breathes the smoke into him; Armin pulls in the hazy smoke as some tendrils escape through Eren’s fingers. The blond sputters, choking on the harsh taste, but smiles weakly at Eren in gratitude.

“I want to try,” her voice shakes. Pulling in a deep drag, she grinds the tip of the cigarette atop the table until it goes out. Then she is cupping her hands around Eren’s mouth and breathing smoke into his lungs. He greedily accepts it; Armin watches them with wide eyes. This exchange is much more graceful, and leaves both parties dissolving into a fit of giggles that they try to muffle. The atmosphere in the library changes for a moment as they all exchange an arbitrary, secret look that they will remember years in the future.

\--

Strands of her hair fall out from how she’s digging her fingernails into her scalp, raking them down her skin. Rain is (filling her eyes) pouring so hard that her vision is blurry; the day had seemed so _ideal_ , but everything always had a tendency to fall down around her: crumble into a pile of meaningless rubble. . _I’m so tired, so so_ so _tired,_ her bones ache; she feels millions of years old, as though she’s only made out of sand that travels with the wind and time. She remains unchanged as minutes tick past, or be it hours. Tears still fall like rainwater from her dark eyes, while her fingers still pull at her hair.

Something must be suffocating her; the realization hits her and she lowers her hands to her chest where she fights an invisible demon as she pulls desperately at the thin fabric composing her top. Words clog her throat, and she’s unable to beat away the rushing darkness; it assaults her from all sides.

A hand reaches through the darkness, pulls her to her feet. “Whatever do you think you are doing out here?” The voice, she recognizes, is the librarian, and he quickly slips his coat onto her shoulders. She forgot all about the weather,  _god forbid_ , the negative two degrees is enough to freeze a person, but she’s only just feeling the icy chill of winter; it nips at her, but assaults her much more gently than the darkness. Just for a moment, she feels oddly  _at peace_ , but when the older man turns to her with his dead eyes, a certain chill flies through her whole body.

“I was hiding,” she says: simply, as if that is answer enough for him.

It isn’t. “From what, pray tell?”

Mikasa shakes her head stubbornly; there is no use in telling a stranger about her frequent breakdowns. This isn’t the first time she’s forgot about the weather while crouching in an abandoned alleyway. “Fuck off,” she mutters underneath her breath.

He catches it nonetheless. “Kindly right after I deposit you at your grubby house, brat.” There’s something about him though; she doesn’t know why, but she’s drawn to him, like a moth to firelight. She wants to get burnt by him, but she’s wary of trespassing in unfamiliar territory in her certain state. Interest pulls her in, but fear restricts her.

This extension of kindness is subtle, but she accepts it, pulling his jacket tightly around her; drawing in his scent, he smells just like their beloved library. Suddenly, she wonders if she can swallow those beautiful metaphors that her eyes can’t pull off the pages if their lips would meet, but that’s foolish, childish thinking that could get her in trouble. Quieting her mind, she bites down on her tongue until she tastes the metallic familiarity.

“Home,” she breathes out gently as they walk. There is a long walk ahead of them, and she’s not comfortable with silence; sometimes she talks to herself just to remind herself that she has a voice. “I can’t _live_ anymore, but I can’t _die_ either.” Her stomach grumbles as an afterthought. She’ll have to find something to eat before she starves. “If I had money, I’d find my own place to live.”

Next to her, he’s quiet; it is almost unsettling how long he turns her words over in his head before giving her a sideways glance. None of his words ask her to explain herself or her troubles, instead they are _hope_ in her dim world. “Would you work at the library?” When he asks, he lifts an eyebrow curiously.

This is the opportunity of a lifetime for her; the break she’s been looking for since she turned sixteen.

The answer is a breathless _yes_ that he accepts with a nod. “You’ll start tomorrow then. I expect you and the other two brats to be there at your usual time.” _Of course, he’s noticed how they are all there every day_ , Mikasa’s mouth pulls up in a poor attempt at a smile. There is an unspoken agreement between all of them that binds them to the library. “My name is Levi. I’ve been running the library for the past two years after my grandparents passed away.”

Mikasa nods, interestedly. There is something about Levi that draws her in, and she wants to know more. Instead of saying anything else though, she lets a silence settle over the two that makes her skin crawl, but no words spring to her lips. Everything dissolves on her tongue like the type of candy she used to get from the corner shop when she was a little child. Neither of them try to interrupt the silence, it sits between them like a glass case is, not holding Mikasa in, no, but this case is separating her from the rest of humanity. She stands outside the case, looking in at all the people living their lives, but she’s not permitted to interact with them.

When they make it to her house, she gives him a smile that doesn’t quite meet her eyes as she shoves his jacket back into his hands. “It was nice to meet you, Levi,” she says, eyes trained on the ground, “I will be ready for work tomorrow.” Then her gaze she pulled up, and Levi gives her a strange look that captivates her; but the look is gone in a split second, and Levi’s turning away from Mikasa as she unlocks her house and steps in. _Thanks_ hangs in the air between them, stretches over distance with each step they take.

Luckily, her aunt’s not in the kitchen or the living room, so Mikasa quickly grabs whatever food she can collect quickly, which ends up being the rest of the loaf of bread, and a bottle of water. Her bedroom door is locked, and she unlocks it noisily before throwing herself down on her bed. _Fuck_ , she whimpers as she opens the water bottle.

She drinks half of it, then eats the bread greedily. All her motions are quick, and then she’s throwing her blanket over her head as tears well in her eyes. They are tears of gratitude, but now she’s going to have to count on herself not to lose control while on the job. Her thoughts transform into dreams of diamond-like eyes. 


End file.
